tobala - Amatlán
Batch: NGG-10
Release date: June 2025
In San Luis Amatlán, in the Miahuatlán district of southern Oaxaca, you’ll find Nicolas Garcia Gutierrez and family making exceptional agave spirits.
Nicolas’ 100% Tobala has become as close to anything gets as core to the Sin Gusano range. There remain remarkable nuances between vintages, and this late-summer 2021 distillation might be our favourite one yet.
Nicolas makes true community spirits. While cultivating various species of agave in his own nursery and land, he also has arrangements with family and friends in neighbouring communities to exchange wild agave for finished mezcal.
When it’s time do the heavy manual labour of building the oven with wood and rocks, and then covering it with the agave, the community comes to help and receives a hearty breakfast when it’s done.
Pre-dawn, waiting for the rocks in the horno to heat
Community oven covering at sunrise
Almost breakfast time
The maguey tobala in this batch were roasted along with a mix of agaves that filled the oven at the time, in August 2021. They remained underground for 14 days before being chopped into fist size chunks by hand with a machete, and then fed through a chipper.
Machete work
Agave chunks ready for the shredder
The milled roasted agave was then left in large open air wooden tubs, or ‘tinas’, with the addition of local well water, to interact with the airborne yeasts and naturally ferment for around 6 days.
Then the sour fermented mash, at this point around 10% alcohol, was loaded bit-by-bit into the boiling chamber of the still. It will take multiple fills of the still to use all the mash in the fermentation tub. And Nicholas employs a very old school technique of adding a little of the first pass, or ‘ordinario’ distillate back into the boiling chamber with each new fill of ferment.
All the fibre goes in the still for the first pass
Swapping out the mash
Everything in this batch was ultimately at least double passed (some triple, when you take into account that old-school technique). After the second distillation the batch was proofed with puntas and colas (heads and tails).
Gracias Nicolas
House tasting notes:
Nose: Those who have come to know and love Nicolas’ spirits in Amatlán along with us will have come to expect salty minimality upfront, and this is no exception. Umami, saline, and very light on the smoke scale. There’s a background mustiness in there waiting to be discovered on the pallet.
Palate: Yes indeed, that salinity carries straight through to first sip before a mineral mustiness overtakes the mid-palate. Woody, mossy, forest floor becomes a little leathery before a dry bite on the back end.
Finish: Spicy sweet & sour tingles ultimately finishing dry. The continuation of a classic.
Grab a bottle while stocks last:
Continue your agave spirits journey via the Mezcal Appreciation Society:
